I spent my fifteen hours observing two special education classrooms at Sulphur Intermediate School. One focused on math and the other on reading, though many of the children I observed worked in both classrooms. The students were in the third, fourth, and fifth grades. Most of the students had mild to moderate disabilities and simply needed extra help in reading, math, or both subjects. They did not stay for the entire day, but rather came for certain periods. During this time, they primarily worked on worksheets designed for the special education classroom as well as working on achieving their goals for accelerated reading. There were a few students who came in for an hour with work from their general education classroom and needed extra help completing their work. There were two students who had more severe disabilities, but they worked with paraprofessionals and did not do the same work as the rest of the class. One method of adjusting the work to meet the needs of the students that I noticed being used a lot in the classrooms I observed was cutting down the amount of work that they had to do. I …show more content…
Now, I realize that a student needing special education does not automatically mean that they will need help with everything and have an extremely difficult time learning. Most of the students I observed did not seem any different than the students not in special education. They just needed extra help in certain subjects. They picked up on the material much more quickly than I had thought they would and were able to do more on their own than I had originally thought. Before this class and project, I also did not think about the fact that students with special needs often stay in the general education classroom as well as working in the special education